Posts Tagged ‘Meetings’

When conducting meetings a few managers feel rushed and metaphorically stomp their foot down and tell them “it’s my way or the highway” and “you better get this done or else!” While this may be efficient use of time for the manager, he or she loses important resources. Some people find this hard to believe, but as a supervisor you don’t know everything!

Soliciting ideas from peers and subordinates can be extremely beneficial. If you don’t have time, then you’re doing something wrong. How can I be so confident and bold in that statement? This is something I’ve learned over time. Here are a few examples:

I took over a new department that had a high staff turnover. Security, accounts and paperwork were a mess, which required me to spend ten to eleven hours a day just to keep the department running. Did I keep the same processes they had used for the past twelve years? No, I solicited feedback from peers, reflected, and made sweeping changes. Thereafter, I had two to three hours each day to spend on developing the department and left after eight hours.

A closed circuit television station was in bankruptcy mode since its inception. There were five staff members and over 50 volunteers. I started networking with broadcast engineers and managers at other stations while learning this technology. I pulled the staff together and solicited feedback. Giving them the empowerment of high level decisions sparked extraordinary changes. When asked who did it, it was “we did it”. I garnered support from upper management, put them on two national cable providers, and they made their first profits.

The gist of the examples are “people support what they help create” and take advantage of the experience and knowledge around you. There’s much more to each example, but this is a short blog post that I don’t want to bore the readers with.